Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Iowa’s secretary of state was
temporarily barred from issuing new rules on purging noncitizens
from voter registration rolls by a judge who said the process
was likely to create confusion for legitimate voters.

Secretary of State Matt Schultz, a Republican, can’t claim
that the public interest justified his use of emergency rule-making procedures governing elections, Polk County District
Court Judge Mary Pat Gunderson in Des Moines said, granting a
motion for a temporary injunction.

“They have created fear that new citizens will lose their
right to vote and/or be charged with a felony, and caused some
qualified voters to feel deterred from even registering,”
Gunderson said in her 12-page ruling.

The lawsuit is among multiple court battles over voting
rules in states, particularly so-called swing states including
Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where both Republican
and Democratic presidential campaigns see possible victories.

At least two lawsuits challenging a proposed voter purge
are pending in Florida. Voter cases are also under way in
Alabama, Texas, Tennessee and South Carolina. In Pennsylvania,
the state Supreme Court is deciding whether to allow to the
state to enforce a law requiring voters to have photo
identification, which the American Civil Liberties Union has
argued was aimed at keeping likely Democratic voters away from
the polls.

In Iowa, the ACLU and a Latino rights group sued to prevent
Schultz from implementing the rule change, contending it would
unfairly affect new citizens. The state said the rules protected
these citizens and barring their implementation would create
uncertainty over the election.

‘Created Confusion’

Gunderson, an appointee of Republican Governor Terry
Branstad, said in her 12-page order that the plaintiffs had
shown the rules “created confusion and uncertainty in the voter
registration process.”

Gunderson said she wasn’t making a decision on the merits
of the lawsuit.

“The court concludes the harm that granting the temporary
injunction may prevent outweighs the harm that may result from
denying it,” she said in the order received yesterday by
attorneys in the case.

Lawyers for the civil rights groups will pursue a permanent
injunction barring the rule changes at a hearing yet to be
scheduled, Joseph Glazebrook, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said
yesterday in a phone interview.

“The state won’t be able to use these rules until after
the court rules on the permanent injunction, which will be after
the election,” Glazebrook said.

The state could appeal Gunderson’s ruling, he said.

‘Temporary Request’

“We respect the ruling, which the judge noted is on the
temporary request only, and is not on the final merits of the
case,” Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said in an e-mailed
statement.

“We argued that Secretary Schultz was legally justified in
enacting emergency rules because of the compressed timeline he
faced at the time he made his decision,” said Miller, a
Democrat. “Clearly, the judge disagreed.”

The ACLU and the League of United Latin American Citizens
of Iowa claim that Schultz instituted a new administrative rule
in July that would require his office to periodically obtain
lists of foreign nationals “from unspecified state and federal
agencies and attempt to match those names to voter registration
records,” as part of an effort to purge noncitizens from the
voting rolls.

Registered Voters

The secretary of state would then send notices to
registered voters whose names appeared on one of these lists
that they may not be citizens and may be illegally registered to
vote, according to the lawsuit.

The voter would have to respond within 14 days to dispute
this information, or face being stricken from the eligible
voters list, the ACLU lawyers said.

“The public has no way to be sure he’s using accurate, up-to-date voters from Iowa’s voter lists,” Ben Stone, executive
director of the ACLU of Iowa, said in a statement.

The rules don’t provide obstacles to legitimate voters,
lawyers for the state said in court papers.

“Ironically, the emergency rules challenged by the
petitioners were promulgated by Secretary Schultz to protect the
voting rights of Iowans whose immigration status in the state’s
drivers’ license database might be incorrect or out of date,”
Miller and Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Thompson said in a
filing last month.

Attorneys for the state are consulting with Schultz on
legal options following the ruling, Miller’s spokesman, Geoff
Greenwood, said in an e-mail.

‘Receive Notice’

The rules would “ensure that any affected individual
receive notice and a hearing before his/her name is removed from
the voter registration records,” the state’s lawyers said. The
state also contends the district court has no jurisdiction to
order a temporary injunction barring the rules.

The secretary of state issued the rules “without any
review by the legislature and without public review,”
Glazebrook said yesterday.

Schultz didn’t “make a sufficiently compelling argument
that the benefits of implementing the rule through the emergency
procedures would outweigh the considerable value of notice and
public participation in the adoption process,” Gunderson said.